The Art of Lin Fengmian
Hong Kong Museum of Art
This exhibition shows how Hong Kong has contributed to the making of a great artist. Had Lin Fengmian not come here in 1978 to paint for more than a decade, he might not have escaped the shadows of western masters such as Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso and Sisley.
His works executed in Hong Kong are particularly inviting. Lin transcended the sadness he'd felt on the mainland, where he had been imprisoned for four years during the Cultural Revolution.
Hong Kong lent him light and fixed his faith in Chinese culture. In Chinese Opera: The War of the Red Cliff (1985), the characters, with shocking-white or icy-blue faces, are being engulfed by a fiery red, like a phoenix being reborn. Poetic and passionate, the ink lines form the background and the foreground, creating a dream-like epic scene: impressionistic, with the immediacy of German Expressionism.
Born in 1900, Lin trained in France from 1919 to 1926. In 1928, he founded the National Academy of Art in Hangzhou, which trained many great Chinese artists.